


DC + Vertigo Ficlets

by NyxieBlack



Category: DCU (Comics), Shade the Changing Man (Comics)
Genre: Ficlets, Gen, Ratings subject to change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 13:09:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20995340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyxieBlack/pseuds/NyxieBlack
Summary: Collection of ficlets for DC/Vertigo characters. Which characters will be specified in the chapter titles to each. Enjoy!





	DC + Vertigo Ficlets

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after Shade’s time travel escapade, but before reuniting with Kathy. I wrote this to get back into his head for _Stereogram_. Also, cuz headcanons.

It was at night. It was always at night. 

Maybe it was the lack of sun, maybe it was being worn out from the day’s activities, maybe it was the isolation, but Rac Shade found that in the deep dark of _night_, his own mind was harder than usual to wrestle into something functioning. With the moon was overhead, his thoughts wandered as they wished. Sometimes they morphed into something monstrous, like an old sweater in a darkened room to the eyes of a child. 

Shade was surprised he still got panic attacks. He had vague memories from childhood of the world both crashing down around him while staying utterly, inexplicably, exactly the same. He didn’t understand that these episodes were wrong—irrational--until after the Sacred Laser, when they stopped, alongside his more inconvenient emotions. His highs and lows alike sanded down until they were ‘manageable.’ 

He never understood how the Sacred Laser worked. Maybe it was something like the prefrontal lobotomy here on Earth. A few years ago, Lenny had told him about it in graphic detail when he was attempting to confront her about something. It was a procedure that stirred around the meat of the brain. Even though Shade was in a body that was, for all intents and purposes, a human one, he didn’t feel any different than if he was in a Metan body. 

Outside of his mind. Something inside was taken from him on Meta. But Troy Grezner had it. Everything in place where it should have been. Once he had come to grips with that body, he almost felt like himself again, someone he didn’t realize he had lost. Almost. He could almost cry at a sunset. It was just…this power. This M-Vest, this one anchor to the living world that he could never abandon, not even in death. 

He started getting panic attacks again. At first, he thought it was his irrevocable link to the Area of Madness doing this to him. But that link seemed to be broken when he went back in time, and even so, the panic attacks remained. They could descend at any time, in any place, but, blessedly, it was usually at night. Alone. They weren’t pleasant. They never were. But in a world where Kathy was out there, somewhere? Where Meta and everyone on his home planet were safe and sound? He could keep on living with them. 


End file.
